The Wine Lover's Daughter

August 15, 2017
Fadiman (At Large and at Small: Confessions of a Literary Hedonist, 2008, etc.) decants a harmonious blend of biography, wine lore, and memoir in this account of a literary daughter's relationship with her celebrated literary father.Born into a secular Jewish family in Brooklyn, Clifton Fadiman (1904-1999) spent his adult life submerging that identity beneath WASP sensibilities and pursuits. His belief that Jewishness was a cultural and career impediment and his envy of WASP privilege were powerful motivators to escape his origins, in the 1930s and beyond. As revealed by his daughter, Fadiman's was almost entirely a life of the mind. Physically clumsy, he was unacquainted with much of life beyond its gustatory or literary pleasures. Though thwarted in his desire to become an academic, he emerged as a self-invented, ardent public intellectual of the first rank. Before the age of 30, he had served as editor-in-chief at Simon & Schuster and head of the book review section at the New Yorker. His friends and colleagues were a who's who of celebrated litterateurs of the time, and the gleam of a life in letters was not lost on his daughter. Despite considerable renown, the refined yet self-effacing Fadiman always regarded himself as an outsider and, in darker moments, even an impostor. The author's mother, by contrast, was of mixed Presbyterian and Mormon stock, an accomplished journalist and screenwriter who relinquished her career to marriage. Anne Fadiman, writer-in-residence at Yale and winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award, grew up in a prosperous, secular, decidedly rational household. Always there were books and a civilizing force embodied by wine, a taste for which she did not share. In limning her father, Fadiman also lays a gradual accretion of detail about herself, but she is careful never to eclipse his (regrettably) diminished star. Reading this daughter's graceful, often melodious billet-doux to her father is not unlike imbibing several equally felicitous glasses of wine, their salutary effects leaving one pleasantly sated.

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Starred review from October 1, 2017
Fadiman (At Large and at Small, 2007), an essayist and journalist of exceptional lucidity, remembers her father, Clifton Fadiman, a famous wit, editor (taking the helm of Simon & Schuster at age 28), critic (for the New Yorker), quiz-show host (Information Please), and all-around man of culture who ardently loved language, literature, and wine. Books formed the ladder he climbed to escape his origins as a poor Brooklyn Jew, but, as Anne so astutely reveals, for all his charm, renown, and accomplishments, he harbored a persistent sense of inferiority, the dark engine that drove his maniacal need for ceaseless work. Still, he took enormous pleasure in life, especially wine, which he first encountered in Paris, while reclaiming his runaway first wife. Plunging headlong into his new passion, Clifton became a legendary connoisseur, stocking an impressive wine cellar and cowriting The Joys of Wine (1975), a definitive volume weighing eight pounds. In this crisp, scintillating, amusing, and affecting memoir, Anne incisively and lovingly portrays her brilliantand vital father and brings into fresh focus the dynamic world of twentieth-century books and America's discovery of wine. Although she inherited her father's literary skills and ardor and was schooled in viticulture from birth, Anne does not find wine delectable. Perhaps she'll write about her mother next as the milkshake lover's daughter. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

Starred review from October 15, 2017

Essayist (At Large and at Small; Ex Libris) and author (The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down) Fadiman's wonderful memoir examines herself, her father, her relationship with her father, wine, books, family, and much more. Clifton Fadiman had a long and distinguished career as a radio and TV host and book reviewer. But his main passion, besides books, was wine. Those familiar with the author's essays will recognize her polymath mind and tangential style, and those unfamiliar will find it delightful to encounter for the first time. How she manages to fit her own life, her father's life, her marriage, a primer on wine, the scientific study of taste, and many other subjects into such a slim volume is mind-boggling, something this reviewer is still trying to comprehend. VERDICT A fascinating book with something to interest anyone; a pure reading pleasure. [See "Reconciling Histories, Unraveling Mysteries," ow.ly/IGNv30fklIH].--Derek Sanderson, Mount Saint Mary Coll., Newburgh, NY

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